An Overview of Changes

1) Single Column Format for Posts: Your Timeline is now on the right hand column, so you’ll no longer need to go back and forth to see posts on the left and right.

2) Left Column for Business Info: The left-hand column will include details about your business. Here you’ll see things like number of page likes, a map (if you have one), website address, hours of operation, contact info, friends who like your page, the “About” info, photos and videos.

3) Easy Access to Admin Tools: In the past, there was a panel at the top that pushed everything down. It’s actually quite annoying. Now you’ll get an admin navigation at the top that includes things like Page, Activity (notifications), Insights, Settings, Build Audience and Help. This navigation will exist no matter where you are within the page.

4) This Week: On the right hand side, you’ll see a quick overview of the number of ads running, number of page likes and post reach for the current week, number of unread messages and notifications.

5) Tabs Buried: Your tabs no longer exist as boxes immediately below your cover photo. They are now accessed within a “More” drop-down.

No, the Tabs Update Isn’t a Big Deal

You probably thought that my “one important change” would be regarding tabs. No, it’s not.

As I discussed over a year ago now, I don’t think this is a big deal. Yes, I think tabs are valuable for first impressions and acquisition when users come to your page for the first time.

But after that, only 2% of your fans ever return to your page. So if you don’t drive traffic to them, they make very little impact.

The key to the success of tabs was and will continue to be your ability to drive traffic to them. Use organic posts that drive people there. Create ads that drive people there, too.

The loss of tabs may actually increase engagement since your content will now be immediately below your cover photo. So there is a positive impact to consider here.

One Change That’ll Make the Biggest Impact

The changes I’ve mentioned so far are all cosmetic. They’re nice. The new design looks cleaner, and it’ll make management of pages easier.

But that’s been mainly Facebook’s fault. They throw that number at us at every turn, so it’s natural that we react the minute one post seems to be reaching fewer people.

The truth is that we should be posting multiple times per week — and hopefully multiple times per day. As a result, our focus should be more on the number of people we’re reaching during a given day or week (if we focus on Reach at all).

I tend to have a Daily Total Reach that is about 5-10 times that of the Total Reach of an individual post, and Weekly Total Reach is about 50-100 times.

Now, this is also influenced by advertising, so it would be helpful if Facebook would instead show us the Weekly Organic Reach (mine is closer to 10 times that of an individual post). But I remain optimistic this change is being made.

I’m holding out hope that this will help shift the perception of marketers away from their post-by-post Reach and towards larger sample sizes. Given user behavior and the fact that it’s impossible — filtering algorithm or not — to reach a high percentage of fans with a single post, this shift is necessary.

Your Turn

What do you think about these changes? Which do you think is most important?